This scenery object features a hardened deck for take-off and landings for airplanes equipped with the rcbco-20 catapult and arrestor gear gauges. It has a nice wake effect. ( Many thanks to Bruce Barker of the Virtual Navy group for letting me include their carrier wake effect.) My goal with this project was to create a landable carrier with wake effect that could be moved to another location with only one set of coordinates and heading to enter. This project does do that; (you do have to enter the coordinates and heading in 3 spots in the XML file)
I started with Phil Crowther's excellent Nimitz .fsc file that he made available several months ago. I converted the file format so it could be compiled into the FS9 .MDL - XML scenery object format. I identified the wake effect as another scenery object in the XML file so it could be moved. At first, the ship showed up right in the middle of the wake. I moved the vessel in relation to it's origin so the bow is close to the front of the wake. The landable surface and runway definition were created with AFCAD and then added to the XML file.
I originally had the Stennis parked in Long Beach Ca harbor, so I moved everything down to San Diego just west of the the Naval Station to exercise the moving files. Everything worked. The ship currently shows up in the airport list as STEN and is at the bottom of the San Diego fields list.
I have not included an ILS as you will have to create a new one if you move the vessel. An ILS can be added easily with AFCAD.
NOTE: When you create a flight the airplane will be sitting close to the stern. That is because I had to offset the vessel in relation to the wake as described above. Just taxi forward to one of the front catapults and then save the flight . Also, to move the ship you need BGLcomp installed and know how to use it.
INSTALLATION: Unzip CV74.zip into a temporary folder. Copy the folder called USS Stennis into the Add On scenery folder in FS2004. Activate the scenery through the scenery library and you are good to go.
MOVING INSTRUCTIONS: Open the folder called "Moving Stuff" and copy the 2 files directly into your BGLComp folder. Now slew an airplane to the new desired location. Jot down the 2 coordinates and heading from the top of FS2004. Right click on the Stennis XML file and open with Notepad. Use Notepad and nothing else or the syntax will get corrupted. You will see 3 places where the coordinates and heading are entered. Replace the existing enteries with the new ones and close the XML file. Note, if you want STEN to show up somewhere other than San Diego Ca in the airport list you need to change the entries for city and state etc in the XML file. Now run BGLcomp. If you are running XP you just have to drag the XML file on top of bglcomp.exe. You will see a short flash of a black screen and in a few seconds a new Stennis .bgl file will appear. If it says it is about 274 kb in size you had a successful compile. If it is small like 1 kb you made a mistake in entering the coordinates.
Copy the new Stennis.bgl file into the add-on scenery> USS Stennis>scenery folder. If you have been good, the carrier will show up at the new location.
I have created the necessary files to move the carrier with BGLComp, so please don't ask me to move it for you as I just don't have the time.
LEGAL: This project is released as freeware. You may modify it, repaint it, etc., upload to another website as long as it is not for profit. Also, if any modifications were made to my files before uploading to another site, I cannot be responsible for their performance. You need my written permission to use any of these files for commercial purposes; otherwise just give me credit for the original design. This airplane should not hurt your computer but I am not responsible if it causes problems.
